The Happiness Switch Inside Your Brain

Can you learn
to be a happier person by repeatedly visualizing two tiny parts of your
brain and imagining yourself tweaking them?

Colorado
teacher and musician Neil Slade says you can.

Slade has
developed brain exercises, described on NeilSlade.com aimed at lifting your spirits and calming your fears. The website has
become something of an underground sensation, attracting an average of
750,000 hits a month through word of mouth alone.

Slade suggests
visualizing part of the primitive brain called the amygdala, commonly
described as the seat of emotional experience. The two amygdalae, each
about the size and shape of an almond, are located on either side of the
head, between the eye and ear, about an inch in. Studies have shown the
amygdalae have a part to play in everything from memory storage to anxiety.

Slade recommends
locating your amygdalae in your thoughts, and visualizing a switch on
each one, with the click-back position turning on the fear feelings, and
the click-forward position turning on feelings of pleasure. Picture yourself
purposefully clicking the switch forward.

Another way
to stimulate lighter and happier feelings is to visualize yourself tickling
each amygdala with a feather.

When University
of Toronto psychologist Adam Anderson heard about the exercises, he laughed.
The assistant professor is also the Canada Research Chair in cognitive
neuroscience, and his research focuses on what the amygdalae contribute
to human emotion. Anderson believes they are one of the elements of our
feelings, but human emotions result from a delicate balance of the functions
of different brain parts.

"I'm
not saying it can't work, but it's a really silly idea that you actually
have to picture your amygdala," he says. "You could teach people
to visualize their left elbows and it might be just as effective.

"It's
a form of relaxation and, if it works, more power to the people who do
it. But as a scientist, I see it as maybe a form of meditation or a distraction
from what's bothering you."

Slade thinks
there is more to it than that. He believes visualizing the amygdalae can
create physiological changes in the brain.

"You
can directly elevate your mood through behavioural change such as laughter
or physical exercise, or you can elevate it through mental stimulation
like these amygdala exercises."

Marie-Louise
Oosthuysen de Guitierrez, a Mexico City teacher who is studying brain
research in education, says Slade's exercises work for her. "Visualizing
clicking forward stimulates the prefrontal cortex," she says. "It
helps me to control intense emotions if I feel upset or angry. I immediately
feel calmer."

Janice Dorn,
a psychiatrist and brain anatomist who has studied the brain for 41 years,
believes Slade's exercises stimulate the connections between the primitive,
or limbic part of the brain and the more evolved prefrontal cortex in
order to develop habits of happier thought and feeling.

Many people
could learn to be happy by regularly repeating thought and visualization
practices, Dorn says in a telephone interview from her office in Phoenix,
Ariz.

It's a matter
of reprogramming your brain to have a tendency towards happiness instead
of emotional pain, and most people can learn to do it.

She recommends
quieting the mind and putting a larger perspective or a positive spin
on your circumstances, imagining this moment 10 years in the future. Ask
yourself how you can learn something useful from the experience.

"Look
for a way to turn any part of it into a positive experience: that's how
the prefrontal cortex operates," Dorn says. "The amygdala is
always talking to the prefrontal cortex. So tell it about joy instead
of telling it that you are a frightened, unhappy person who deserves to
suffer."

She suggests
another exercise: Try to visualize your amygdalae lit up and shining beautifully.
At that moment, take yourself to a time when you were as happy as you
have ever been. Send the joy you feel to your prefrontal cortex so you
can remember it.

"The
more you practise these things, the more you can voluntarily increase
the activity of the front cortical processing system. The more you do
it, the better you get at it, and the better you feel."

Those with
serious mental illness or addiction problems should seek professional
help, she adds. Instinct and emotions were once thought to originate in
the limbic part of the brain, the first part to develop in humans.

The prefrontal
cortex, the more evolved part of the brain , was believed to control higher
functions such as judgment and permanent memory.

But Anderson
says no one knows for sure where feelings originate. Still, much like
cognitive therapy, he believes people can use their thinking to change
the way they feel and this is how Dorn's or Slade's suggestions could
work.

"Studies
show that thinking supported by the prefrontal cortex can increase or
decrease limbic responses," Anderson observes. "You can reframe
an event to make it look sunnier or feel better to you.

"There
is new evidence from studies measuring brain activity that the prefrontal
cortex can be called upon to turn up or down the activity in the ... limbic
regions such as the amygdala and hypothalamus. That is, having thoughts
about how to make yourself feel better or worse actually changes the responses
in primitive neural circuits, resulting in a genuine change in how emotions
are created."